Saturday, October 21, 2017

Entry 397: Some Brief Thoughts On a Culture of Sexual Assault (I Should Have Done More)

Short entry this week.  We have a bunch of company this weekend, the in-laws and some family friends of the in-laws.  There are currently six adults and four kids staying in our house, so, as you can imagine, it's a bit hectic...

[Note: This entry ended up not being that short after all -- as usual.]

It has been interesting, to say the least, to watch this Harvey Weinstein story snowball into a much broader story about a culture of sexual harassment and sexual assault in general.  It seems as if this didn't really happen when the mainstream media started reporting on other predators, like, say, Bill Cosby.  I'm not sure why Weinstein seems to have resonated so much more with people.  Perhaps Weinstein's tactics were more in line with the type of unwanted sexual advances the typical woman receives on a regular basis.  Most women were never drugged and raped by "America's Grandpa," but many have been harassed in the workplace by men who had power over their careers.

As I mentioned previously, I was only vaguely aware of Weinstein before all this broke, and my opinion of him was already negative -- I thought he was the stereotypical asshole, bullying business executive (and he seems to have been that too).  I've been reading a lot of the stories about him, and I've been following the chorus of "me too"s on social media.  I've said almost nothing about it, and I haven't responded to any of my friends' posts.  It's way too easy to misunderstand somebody or be misunderstood when communicating in a series of texts and emojis, so I typically steer clear of serious issues on social media.  (On a related note, is this soon going to be a cop-out on my part?  Is discourse on social media going to take over to such an extent that saying "I don't want to talk about it on social media" is tantamount to saying "I don't want to talk about it all?"  A different topic, for a different time.)  Also, when you're not a member of the victimized group, when you are just an ally, you have to be careful not to "make it about you."  So, with that said, I know this subject is not about me.  But men do play a big part in it, and this blog is about me, and so I believe it's the appropriate place to give my thoughts on the subject.

My thoughts are very much in line with those of Quinten Tarantino.  I have read some criticism of Tarantino on this.  Many say it's too little, too late, which is one hundred percent fair, and it's basically what Tarantino himself says.  ("Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse.")  But his words really resonate with me, and I don't think I'm alone.  Only a very small percentage of the population is in a position to see firsthand somebody as rich and powerful as Weinstein in action, but I suspect the vast majority of men have known another man who very likely crossed a line with a woman in some way -- and we didn't do enough about it.

In my case, throughout my life I've had three woman tell me they've been raped, and each time my reaction was completely underwhelming.  I basically did nothing.

The first woman -- girl, actually -- was a high school friend.  She described the first time she had sex, with her boyfriend at the time, and it was not consensual.  I dismissed it at the time because she was still really close friends with the guy.  But, if what she told me was accurate (I think it was), and if my memory is correct (I think it is), then she was flat-out date raped.

The second woman was a college friend.  She openly said a different guy, who we all knew, raped her.  To my knowledge, nobody did anything about it.  (I don't even know if she did much about it.)  I did ask another friend about it once, and he said, "I don't think that's really what happened."  And so I just accepted that without further inquiry because it was easy -- that's probably not what happened.  I even saw the guy around a few times after that.  I always tried to avoid him, but even before this all went down, I thought he was a colossal asshole and tried to avoid him.

The third woman was a high school friend, who was visiting some other high school friends at my college, so we were all hanging out together.  We were playing the drinking game "I Never," where you say something you've never done and everybody who has done that has to drink (or something like that).  Because we were all young, drunk, and dumb somebody said "I've never been raped!" and my friend drank.  She didn't make an ostensibly big deal about it, but it was pretty clear she wanted people to notice.  I did, and I didn't do anything about it.

That's the point: I didn't anything about any of them.  Maybe it wasn't my place to do anything, but I could have asked -- could have, but didn't.  My attitude was somewhere between denial and "somebody else other than me should be handling this."  And that's not good enough.

One through line of all these incidents is that they happened when I was young.  I think I was only 21 or 22 when the last one occurred.  I didn't have the life experience to really know how to process something like this.  But like Quentin Tarantino, I knew enough to do more than I did.

4 comments:

  1. It's not only men who often don't do enough. Years ago my roommate told me a guy in our group of friends made her uncomfortable when they were alone. He didn't rape her, but there was unwelcome kissing and advances. I don't remember specifics, but I remember that my reaction, or rather lack of one, upset her. I even asked her clarifying questions and she, rightly so, got upset with me. And the sad reason I wasn't impressed is because fending off unwanted sexual contact was something I often found myself doing, fortunately pretty much successfully* so I was basically like "yeah and...?" At that period in time my perspective was that's something that happens and maybe she wasn't being clear enough with him, but now I see that's a shitty and completely wrong response and it's fucked up I ever even accepted this kind of thing as a fact of life. I did eventually realize no matter what happened she didn't like this guy and she had a valid reason why so I did tell my boyfriend, now husband, about it and said I didn't want to hang out with that guy any more.

    *I say pretty much successfully because there was one incident I look back on and realize I basically gave in because I wanted him to go away, not because I was into him. It felt like a choice I made at the time, but had he not been so persistent my choice would have been not to be physical so.... Murky waters.

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    1. Yes, it is societal problem, not just a problem with men (though we are the worst offenders, by far, in committing actual sexual assault, and, I suspect, in complacency surrounding the issue as well). Your point about murky waters is also a keen one. One thing I don't like, and I don't think is helpful, is when people act like sexual assault is binary. Most women I've talked to on the issue have a "murky waters" experience in their past. And I read an article (written by a staunch feminist) about this very topic.

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    2. Oh, and let me know who the pushy guy was if you want me to kick his ass :)

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    3. Yeah, like anything this is not always a black and white issue. What if both parties are under the influence and incapable of making rational decisions? What if someone isn't that into it, but reluctantly never says no and then later regrets it and decides to place blame on the other party? I'm not saying that is always the case, but these situations do happen. The important thing is to ALWAYS take someone's concerns seriously and no one should ever be afraid to report for fear of retribution. And I appreciate the offer of ass-kicking. He's long out of my life and (usually) thoughts. It was a guy my freshman year of college whose last name I don't even remember though we were good friends at one point. He had a girlfriend back at home, but was flirty with me and showed up blind drunk at my dorm one night my roomie was gone. If I had a do-over I would never have opened the door because I only did so because he was pounding on it and I didn't want him to wake my neighbors. That's where the messed up part comes in because that was me playing the part of polite woman when I should have told him told him to fuck off and not given a crap what others thought. I don't feel that it was a forced rape, more a regretful incident, and I chalked it up to a learning experience which caused me in the future to be more discerning and less worried about his feelings or feeling responsible for his actions. I know though that I have been very, very lucky to have my "no thanks" responses respected. Most of the guys I've spent time with in my life have been stand-up gentleman who are secure enough with themselves to handle rejection. I did have one other incident I think could have gone much differently, but fortunately, my roommates came home just when it was starting to get scary. Oh and one other thing about that drunk friend... he felt guilty later about cheating on his girlfriend so he told her and she and a couple other people I didn't care about it decided I was a slut who seduced him. That, of course, was entirely unfair, but I was able to pretty much have nothing to do with any of them after that so it didn't have much impact on my life and taught me not everyone is going to like me or want to hear my side.

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